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XCOR Aerospace

XCOR Aerospace is a private rocket engine and spaceflight development company based at the Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, California. XCOR was formed by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team in September, 1999. XCOR is headed by Jeff Greason who is the CEO.

Key people

Jeff Greason, Dan DeLong, Aleta Jackson and Doug Jones previously worked at the failed Rotary Rocket company.

Projects

Projects have included:

EZ-Rocket, a Rutan Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft fitted with two 400 lbf (1.8 kN) thrust rocket engines replacing the normal propeller engine. EZ-Rocket has been flown at numerous airshows including the Oshkosh Airshow.
Rocket Racer - The EZ-Rocket program led to the rocket plane design for the Rocket Racing League. This consists of a modified Velocity SE with a 1500lbf LOX-kerosene engine. The engine uses pressure-fed LOX and pump-fed kerosene, a combination that allows the fuel to be stored in the airplane's wing tanks while avoiding potential complications with pumping liquid oxygen.
The Lynx rocketplane, capable of carrying a pilot and a passenger or payload on flights to 65 km by 2010. Between 20 and 50 test flights of Lynx are planned, along with numerous static engine firings on the ground. A full step-by-step set of taxi tests, runway hops and full-up flights are planned to get the vehicle to a state of operational readiness. Lynx is envisaged to be roughly the size of a small private airplane. It would be capable of flying several times a day making use of reusable, non-toxic engines to help keep the space plane's operating costs low.
Tea cart engine, a 15 lbf (67 N) thrust rocket motor burning nitrous oxide and ethane, mounted on a small industrial cart. The tea cart engine has repeatedly been fired indoors at conferences and demonstrations and had accumulated over 1,100 firings and 6,000 seconds of run time by the end of 2003.
LOX-methane rocket engines in testing in 2005.
Early LOX-methane work led to a NASA contract, jointly with ATK, to develop a 7500 lbf engine for potential use as the CEV lunar return engine. On January 16, 2007 XCOR announced the successful test firing of a preliminary "workhorse" version of this engine.
XCOR has plans to develop Xerus, a reusable suborbital spaceplane for tourist and scientific payload applications. The vehicle will be the minimum feasible size -- one pilot plus one passenger -- in order to keep development and capital costs down.
XCOR has developed Nonburnite (tm), a cryo-compatible, inherently non-combustible composite material based on a thermoplastic fluoropolymer resin. Low coefficient of thermal expansion and inherent resistance to microcracking make it well suited to cryogenic tank use and also part of vehicle structure.